Take Hold of My Spinning World
by Hearts of Eternity
Summary: Jazz's world has always spun a little faster than the average mech's. And then one orn he encouters a mech who changes it all.


This was just a flight of fancy, something insane that fell from the tips of my fingers as I typed. This could either be awesome or a major flop. I have no idea. I'm taking a big chance here.

I can't say if it makes much sense, or if it makes any sense at all, but, hey, craziness is half the fun. Readers can either consider this WE continuality or not; expansion fic or stand alone one-shot. A thing to remember though is that the Jazz being featured in this fic may be a little bit more OOC than what you might expect. He's the pre-Jazz that came before the Jazz we all know and love. You might see a little bit of the "real" Jazz in there and you might not. I'm curious to know.

Dedicated to **Lecidre**, who has been too wonderful for words.

Enjoy

Disclaimer: I don't own Transformers. End of story.

**Take Hold of My Spinning World**

Jazz's world spun a little faster than the average mech's.

His world was one of multi-facetted colour, of blurs too fast to see, of shadows too deep to fathom, of words too shallow to hold any promise. He lived amongst a tempest of his own creation, spinning thought and word and reality into a maelstrom of incredible possibility, far beyond what any _normal_ mech could ever imagine.

Thank Primus Jazz was not a normal mech.

His Creator had been an odd one, equipping Jazz with full lingual and motor programs when he was a sparkling, leaving him light-years ahead of the rest. When all the other sparklings were learning to walk in a straight line and speak more than singular words and broken sentences, Jazz was attempting back flips and cartwheels, talking in volumes to whomever would listen. He was made the outcast for it, forced to interact with the caretakers to the Sector and all the other adult bots because the sparkling and younglings didn't understand him. It frustrated him to no end to know that they were all slower, duller, more ignorant than him to the infinite possibilities beyond the Youth Sector walls.

He was so much sharper, quicker, cleverer, _better_ than everyone else.

He couldn't be touched. Couldn't be kept in one place. He was bored and unchallenged. Which is why he escaped. Under the cover of night, right under everyone's olfactory casings, Jazz slipped out, the only sparkling to ever do so successfully, and was never seen again.

How many nights had he spent laughing to himself over that? He was sneaky and sly, untouchable and untraceable.

That orn taught him he wasn't like other mechs who trained and trained for vorns on end, slaving under the teachings of a mentor to become what they wanted. No, he had a talent that no other mech had. He was amazing, and unique, and alone.

If he could steal himself out of a highly protected Youth Sector, then he could steal anything from anywhere. He could get in and out of places no other could touch. He could delve into data banks as if they were open data pads, free for his perusal.

He was fast enough. Smart enough. Clever enough.

Where, for many others, there were limits, Jazz, in his infinite need to go beyond, soar higher, dig deeper, push harder, saw nothing but forever laid out before him. He was immortal. Untouchable. Gifted and amazing. In his own mind, he was probably on par with the Prime himself. There was nothing that he couldn't do. Nothing that he couldn't steal. Nowhere he couldn't go. Nothing he couldn't touch, see, smell, or taste.

The world, _his world_, which spun so fast that it was a mere blur of vague impressions and shadows of people and only whispers of words, was all his to do with as he pleased.

And do with as he pleased he did.

Jazz was what many called "a mech of many functions."

He was _valuable._

He knew it.

He used it.

In his spinning blurred world of implied loyalties and metaphorical masks, he was the master of it all and was paid handsomely for his skills. He could take others along for the rollercoaster ride, drag them to the brink of the world he lived in and push them over into a maddening abyss. He did it for fun, sometimes. Or to keep his skills sharp.

For the right price, he could be pointed in the right direction, find a mech and break him, shatter him without so much as blinking an optic, and then sweep the pieces into his palm and hand them over to a nameless boss he cared nothing for. He did it easily. _Too_ easily.

He continued for vorns. Right through the Golden Age of Cybertron.

He lived that way for a life time.

And when the war started, Jazz new he hit pay dirt.

Sure, the Autobots, in their noble stupidity, their false loyalty, their inflated need to do what was supposedly "right", would never want him. Never need him.

But the others…

Megatron paid well.

Far better than any other buyer for his services.

The Decepticons were where he belonged. They were fast. Strong. Smart. Clever.

Megatron offered Jazz something he had never truly experienced before; he offered a challenge.

Jazz, already two steps ahead and planning the next three, took all the challenges head on, with vigour. He was an unstoppable force. He was in and out of Autobot bases before they even knew he was there. Mechs would be brought to their knees when he struck, accessed and stripped of all their precious data, only to be laid out before Megatron. Sometimes in pieces.

Then came the orn when his ultimate challenge arrived.

It came in the form of a storm-grey mech. A pre-program built and sparked to serve as a tactician for Security Response, reformatted for the rigors of battle, war. He was bound by energon restraints. Oozing energon where armour had been gouged off.

Jazz's orders had been simple. Beyond simple. Even a half-bit glitch with a tenth of a processor could do it. All Megatron asked was to pry needed information out of the mech's processor and then kill him. That was all. Nothing more. It had been done a thousand times before. It was easier than living.

But there was something about the mech that gave Jazz _pause_.

Gave his spinning, untouchable world _pause._

Prowl.

Prowl was his designation and Jazz would never forget it from that moment on. From the moment they stood faceplate to faceplate and introduced each other in a mockery of civil conversation, after which Jazz told him exactly what he planned to do; force an interface connection between the two of them and rip Prowl's mind to shreds for whatever tiny pieces of information he could possibly have. From then on, he knew that Prowl was different from every other bot he had ever encountered. Because Prowl replied in a voice that was calm and even and so out of place in the world Jazz was used to, he said-

"_Your chances of succeeding are highly improbable." _

And he was right.

That orn had been the first orn Jazz had failed at something. While he could juggle hundreds, even thousands, of separate tasks, carry out the orders set by Megatron himself while following his own agenda, this one mech, his one fragging mech, caused him to _fail_.

That scared him a little bit. The taste of failure was unfamiliar to him. Bitter. He didn't know what to do with it. He didn't know how to handle it.

So, the next orn, he went back and tried again to break this mech that refused to be broken.

Prowl proved to be as frigid as ice. He was as frustratingly unmoveable as an indestructible wall. His mind was sealed tight, locked down, so ordered beyond comprehension that he seemed to know every singe circuit that fired, every neutral relay that twisted through, every insignificant speck of himself and was able to block it or shut it down or throw a firewall up before Jazz could even strike.

The failure was eating away at Jazz, who had always been better, smarter, cleverer. Always ahead of the pack. How dare this nobody not bend to his will. How dare this _Prowl_, this _abomination_, exist.

Strangely enough, Jazz cursing Prowl out was how their rapport actually began.

Jazz said something and Prowl answered back.

A conversation. An _actual_ conversation. Not blurry and fake, whispered or scripted. When Jazz said something, Prowl answered back. The mech was beaten, barely holding on and yet he talked back. He spoke as if it were Jazz that was barely there. As if it was Jazz who was hardly in the world at all. He was cautious and even when he spoke, watching Jazz as if there was a chance he might snap if the wrong word was chosen for a sentence being spoken. Which was all wrong. Jazz was in control of everything. He was the master. He did as he pleased. The world was _his_ for the toying.

Wasn't it?

_Wasn't it!?_

When he asked Prowl about it, demanded it of him really, the mech had given him a look that was mirthlessly amused.

"You truly are as deluded as they say," was his reply.

_Deluded. _

Bots thought he was deluded.

"Maybe Ah am," Jazz replied calmly, coolly, though his sharp optics glittered madly.

Prowl proved such a challenge, became a pivotal obsession for him. The spinning world began to revolve around a certain point. A pinpoint. Around a mech that was cold and unbreakable. There were orns when Jazz would simply wander into the small room that Prowl was restrained in and simply talk. No interrogation. No interfacing. Just talk.

Somehow, whenever Jazz walked into this room, his world began to slow. Prowl made it slow.

And then came the orn when Megatron came and said enough was enough. They were wasting resources on this useless mech. It was time to kill him.

So Jazz found himself in Prowl's room in the middle of the night doing something he never thought he ever would be doing. His world had finally spun out from his control. He watched his own hands cut through the energon restraints. He hauled the other mech to his feet. Steadied him when he swayed. Grinned when Prowl could only stare.

"What are you doing?" he asked in that perpetually calm voice.

"What's it look like ta you? Ah'm setting ya free."

Prowl's frame was larger than Jazz's, making it a little awkward to haul the weak, pathetic creature into the corridor.

"Why?"

Jazz laughed, his thoughts flying by in a blur as he tried to keep up with the world that had suddenly flown out of his grip.

"Ah don't know."

He may not have known _why_ he was freeing this strange, infuriating Prowl, but he sure as pit knew _how_. to free him. He was always several steps ahead. Faster. Smarter. Cleverer. One by one the security cameras went down. The route chosen was barren. They made it outside the compound before their feet could even realize their footing had changed.

"Why are you doing this?" Prowl asked again. It seemed he couldn't wrap his processor around the lack of logic Jazz chronically worked with.

"Ah've never met anything like ya before. It'd be a waste ta kill ya."

"You have killed before."

"Yeah, but never someone so interestin'."

They were running now. Through the shadows and murk and gloom. The Decepticons of the base had finally realized what had happened and they were mobilized. Coming for them. Jazz's optics were bright and wild. He was laughing. Prowl was scowling, shirked along for the ride as searing plasma flew by his head.

"I have been called many things, but 'interesting' has never one of them."

"There's a first time fer everythin'."

Everything was a blur and the only thing that could be heard over the gunfire was Jazz's laughter as he felt the world fly away.

At the border, they paused. Prowl wavered, unnaturally unsure of what he was supposed to do. Jazz made the decision for him, heaving him away to stand on his own, beyond the border of the Decepticon base.

"Go on, yer free!"

Prowl stood unmoving, despite the hordes of mechs stampeding for him. "How am I to get away?"

"Ah already thought of that," Jazz informed him, trying to push this creature capable of slowing down his too fast, too blurry, too vague world away from the fray. He was already several steps ahead. The Autobots were laying in wait in the shadows just beyond sight. "Yer friends are out there waitin' fer ya. Go!"

Still, Prowl was frozen. He was examining Jazz. "Come with me," was all he said.

"Ah can't." The answer was automatic. It was something he hadn't planned for. Never foreseen.

"The Autobots could use someone like you."

"Just go, Prowl. Yer friends are waiting." The world was spinning _too_ fast now. _Too_ wild. It was out of his hands.

"You helped me escape," Prowl pointed out, his optics seemingly the only things refusing to spin along with the world. "You won't be able to go back to the Decepticons. Come with me."

"Ah wouldn't make it as an Autobot. Ah'm not cut out fer that sort o' thing."

Prowl's hand shot out and encircled Jazz's wrist. Suddenly, the world utterly stopped. Halted. Froze. It all focused onto that single point where their frames touched.

"You're smart. You can learn."

Could he do it? Was he really smart enough to do something like that? Clever enough? Was it possible to learn loyalty? To become trustworthy? Noble? Could he change at all?

It was a challenge he could hardly refuse.

Prowl's optics were still, pained but waiting for him.

"Alright, Ah'll give it a try."

The Autobot's faceplate quivered for an astrosecond, as if he almost smiled. "Your chances of succeeding are highly probable."

Finally, the world started spinning again as they ran together. Prowl was composed in strained silence. Jazz was laughing again.

From that orn on, his world never quite spun the same way again.


End file.
